The Missing
by myInfirmary
Summary: A short fic set after Purgatory, about Ichabod and his life without Abbie, and with Katrina. It's not much, it's just a fic, that's all.


He feels lost, the kind that cannot be found.

He has his wife with him once again, and he should be happy, in fact, he is, he's happy to have her back, she's his world, he loves her. But, he feels lost.

He feels lost, wandering about in the woods with no direction or purpose. It doesn't make sense to him why, when Katrina, the person he loves most in the entire world is with him once again. They make a good team against evil too, and she has assured him that when the time is right they will go back for Abbie-he believed her.

When Katrina was trapped in Purgatory, he'd felt his life was incomplete. In the stillness of his home without Abbie, when his head rested on the flat pillow of his bed, and he had nothing to do but think, he'd felt a hollowness deep inside his soul. The hollowness never went away, sometimes he didn't feel it as profoundly as he did in the silence, in the dark, but it never went away.

When he was reunited with Katrina, his wife, he felt a shift, a sudden replacement. The hollowness went away, but in its place, something else grew. He found that he couldn't name it. He passed it off as regret for leaving Abbie in Purgatory, nothing else.

The first day went by, with Katrina by his side, and the nameless feeling pressing against his chest, against his skull, threatening to escape. The day became two, then three, then a week, and still he couldn't identify what he was feeling. All he knew was that something was not right, not inside him, not around him, not in Sleepy Hollow, something was just not right. Again, he blamed the absence of Abbie, because now, who would guide him through the current century? Who would listen to his endless complains about everything?

'What is the matter my love?' Katrina questioned him. Perhaps, she too saw that something was amiss with him.

'I feel...' he answered in a sombre voice, 'I feel as though...' he paused to look at nothing, 'something is not right. I don't know how I'm feeling honestly.'

They never spoke of it again.

He couldn't grasp what was going on with him. The world seemed to him, a slight shade of grey, and more blue, the blue of a cloud covered morning. His desire to live was very much present, yet he felt as though it were an injustice that he was living.

Everyday he thought of Abbie, he thought of her in the place, where his wife had been, the place Moloch chose. He would return for her, it was just, at the moment, there was more evil than before. He thought of her, because they used to battle demons together. That was all.

'I feel alone sometimes,' Katrina confessed to him three weeks after Purgatory.

Those words, they seemed like a lifetime ago now, but Abbie had once said them to him. She'd confessed that she felt alone at times as well.

'What did you say?' he set his mug down on the table, it wasn't that he hadn't heard what his wife had said, because he did, somehow, he just wanted to hear them again, to make certain she hadn't been the one who'd said those words before. More aptly, to imagine Abbie was speaking them to him, her voice a little sad.

'I feel alone sometimes,' she repeated. Her eyes begged for attention, although he didn't want to continue with the conversation, her manner dictated his will.

'Why do you feel alone sometimes?'

'You are here,' she told him, 'but you are never with me. Constantly, I feel as though you would rather be somewhere else, as though I'm not enough for you.' She'd looked so pained that he didn't have the strength to argue with her, tell her that he loved her, and that she was all he'd ever need, instead he said, 'I apologise that I make you feel that way.'

'My love,' she walked over to him, and took his hand in hers, 'if anything at all bothers you, you can confide in me.'

He looked at their hands, remembering a time when a much smaller hand than Katrina's had been in his own. Of late, tiny things had been coming to him, things that had neither explanation, nor trigger, they appeared randomly. For most of the time, he told himself that perhaps he craved another sort of life.

'Katrina?' He wanted to ask if she ever thought of another life, of someone else, he didn't ask her, instead he shook his head and said, 'Never mind.'

Her face contorted in confusion, 'My love, tell me, what is bothering you? You haven't been the same since Purgatory.'

He never gave her an answer, not that day. He did think about it later, when they were in bed, and he thought she was fast asleep. He turned onto his back, and thought about it. The evil of Sleepy Hollow never gave him the time to examine his feelings, his life.

'Ichabod?' she sat up in bed, apparently not having slept.

'Have you ever had the feeling that something has been taken from inside you?' he asked her.

'What is that my love?' she asked him, she didn't hear what he said.

'There is something that is missing from me.' He turned the other way for sleep, stiffening a little when she placed her hand on his shoulder.

'Perhaps it's this new era, I am having difficulty adjusting as well,' she told him.

'No.' He missed Abbie, he just really missed her. He supposed it was abnormal, because when he was with Abbie, he missed Katrina, and now with Katrina, he missed Abbie. Would he ever be satisfied?

'What then?' Katrina asked.

'I don't know,' he admitted in quiet frustration, 'I need to know nonetheless. My life, my existence, has no meaning if I don't find out what is this...this feeling is, that plagues me.'

He feels more than lost, he feels as though a great part of him, has been taken from inside him and hidden away in a place he would never find.

It's not the same thing, he realises, feeling as though something has been taken, and feeling that something is missing. They are closely similar, the two feelings, but they are not the same.

During the day, he feels that something is missing, and at night, in the stillness of the dark, he feels the pressure of something having been taken from him.

He can't share any of it with Katrina, because she wouldn't understand, in fact, he doesn't even understand it himself.


End file.
